After a potential banana skin victory over Georgia, Gordon Strachan's improving side will have taken much confidence against a disciplined Georgian defence. Had the decision making been better in the final-third, Scotland could have won the game slightly more comfortably. However, it was good to see Strachan's men once again dominate large spells of the match.
Up next for Scotland sees them face a flying Polish side on Tuesday night. Winning their opening two qualifiers, Poland will be coming into the game high in confidence whilst sitting top of Group D.
Despite not playing overly impressive at home to Germany, Poland came out 2-0 winners against the World Champions. Against Poland, the German’s failed to convert a handful of good opportunities.
With Poland beating a reasonably strong German team, their tales will be up. So how can Scotland win on Tuesday?
How Poland attack
Against Germany, almost every time going forward, Poland played in the wide areas and very rarely through the middle. The Poles were happy to sit back and defend for much of the game; however, when Poland counter-attacked they did it with pace and numbers.
Influential players
Almost everybody’s obvious choice would be Bayern Munich's Robert Lewandowski, however, the clinical finisher has struggled to adapt to Poland’s style of play.
The only continual attacking threat for Poland against Germany was 26 year old, Stade Rennais winger Kamil Grosicki. Most of the time when Poland were looking dangerous, Grosicki was at the heart of it, often spearheading the Polish attacks.
Formations
When Poland were defending against the German's, they used a solid 5-4-1 formation, with two wing back's slightly higher up the pitch than the three centre half's. Throughout the game when Poland were going forward, they switched to an expansive 3-4-2-1, seemingly outnumbering the German defence on the counter attack.
How to beat them?
Although fairly solid at the back and pacey in attacking positions, the way that Poland set themselves up defensively against Germany created a lot of space behind the wing backs.
The two Polish wing backs played higher up the pitch than the other defenders, leaving a large amount of space in the flanks for the German’s to exploit. Scotland could potentially use this extra space in the wings to positive effect, with attacking threats like Ikechi Anya, Andrew Robertson and Sean Maloney running into advanced positions outwide. I believe that both sets of fullbacks and wingers for Scotland have enough pace and footballing intelligence to get in behind the Polish wing backs. Can Scotland beat Poland? In my opinion, Scotland do have enough to cause Poland problems and come away with a victory. However, I believe a more realistic result would be a draw, which would still be a pretty positive scoreline. My opinion Poland 2 - 1 Scotland